Easter Monday

Happy Easter Monday!
Even though it's not really an observed holiday (unless you're fortunate enough to work for the banks or government)I still think of today as part of the holiday weekend. Come to think of it, when I was working at Gallivan & Associates (pre-Max days)we were usually given this day off as a holiday. A nice and unexpected gesture!

First of all, our Easter dinner yesterday was really nice. We invited Nelson & Alice and Gerry. Both Nelson and Gerry work with Keith. Our house is now overflowing with chocolate. Not only did the Easter Bunny bring quite a bit to our place...so did our guests. Alice made a beautiful Easter basket up for Max and included a one pound chocolate bunny for him. Now what four year old do you know, needs a 1 pound solid chocolate bunny? What 34 year old do you know for that matter?! What do do with all this chocolate....what do do, what to do, what to do? Any suggestions??!

I'm happy to report that dinner turned out. No disasters. That's always a good thing! It's so stressful for me before hand...hoping I don't goof up too badly on the meal. I think the thing I was worried about the most was the dutch apple pie. See, I rarely make pie. I think I could count on one hand the number of pies I've made in my lifetime. So why did I chose to make something that I've never done before? Who knows. And that's what I was referring to about goofing up earlier. I was so worried the pie would be a flop. Turns out, it was a hit! Thanks to Patty Albrecht's recipe in the Mapleview Church cookbook. I highly recommend it. It's easy to make and DELISH! There's none left. That's because I sent the few remaining pieces home with our guests. They seemed more than delighted to take it with them.

I included a few photo's from our dinner and Max playing a bit of indoor baseball (eek!) before dinner. In case you're wondering, the bottles on the table are red and white sparkling grapejuice. Didn't want to alarm anyone!

In the evening after everyone was gone, Keith and I watched the movie "Dan in Real Life". (starring Steve Carroll from The Office). It was so funny! We were laughing throughout the whole movie. I think the best part was "This Little Piggy went to the Market". Oh my. Hysterical!!! I think I had tears of laughter at one point. I love that type of humour. Very "The Office-ish" type of humour. Steve Carroll actually seems quite normal in this movie...most of the movie parts he plays tend to be geekish/loserish. But this time around he seemed quite normal. Good movie!

Keith was up bright and early this morning. He joined a gym on the weekend and today marks his first extra early morning wakeup call - he's planning to work out every morning before he goes into work. He starts work pretty early to begin with, so me thinks I'll have a tired honey in the evenings. I'm excited for him though! A bunch of his work friends have already joined and even though he has promised that he won't make this a competative thing. Secretly though, I know that he's going to be competing (quietly) with himself. That's just how he works!

So Max and I had quite a nice relaxing day today. The morning started off with rain and some gloomy grey weather, but by noon the sunshine broke through the clouds and the afternoon has been beautiful.

Our day included some fun playdough baking time complete with a birthday party for all of his teddybears, a NASCAR race which was attended by all the same teddybears, played a bit of catch using the new baseball glove that was in someone's Easter basket, card games - crazy eights/old maid/go fish (Max is totally into playing card games and he's so much fun to play with. We had a riot with Old Maid. He could never remember "old maid". Instead he refers to her as "Old Mar-den and Mizz Marden". I was laughing so hard when I first heard him call her that. That game gets pretty intense even with only 2 people! I think he'd have a lot of fun with UNO. I want to hunt that one down in time for camping season this summer.) We did a few errands in the early afternoon and celebrated when we were finished by picking up a coffee for me and two chocolate timbits for the Maxter. Max did some painting, helped me with the laundry folding and we did lots of chatting and silliness. It's been a really fun day together!!

This is actually March Break for us. This year the children get 2 weeks of March break which included last week and this week. So tonight I want to do a bit of brainstorming with the little man and make a list of things to do to keep ourselves occupied. I need to make some phonecalls about playdates so that will help fill up a good portion of our week. I'd like to do a few fun and unexpected things too. I'm open to suggestions...any ideas out there?

Stay tuned...I will be posting vacation photo's shortly. Promise!